Destiny, despite the hype, has been under some intense criticism since it launched earlier this month. I guess that’s just what record-breaking pre-orders does to a game. With as much hype as it had, everyone was expecting 9’s and 10’s to be rolling out; instead, Bungie and Activision were greeted with rather pedestrian scores, much lower than what they had probably anticipated. The sales are there, though, and I suppose that’s all that matters because, as I wrote earlier, Destiny is one of those games that, while at launch may not be complete, will grow over time — we just need to give it a chance.
Even with Bungie’s promise of building a game to last 10 years, there’s still a rather large number of people who for some reason are just waiting for it to fail — for it to be a flop. Well, keep waiting, ‘cause that won’t happen. Not now, not a year from now, not ever — except when Bungie is done with it.
And the answer is simple quite really: Sony needs it to succeed. And it will on the PS3 and PS4. Why? Because up until now a game like this hasn’t been offered on PlayStation. As hard as Sony has tried in the past, they’ve yet to create a first-person shooter with the same clout as Halo. They’ve certainly tried, though. Killzone: Shadow Fall, which was released as a PS4 launch title, may have been fun, but Halo it is not.
Well, guess what? Destiny just so happens to be developed by the creators of Halo, which might explain why the two feel so alike. While Destiny might be different in overall scope and design, there’s no denying the the similarities in gameplay between the two franchises. Anyone who has played Halo probably notices the mechanics feel very much the same, especially in PvP.
Similarities aside, there’s just a sense of polish in Destiny’s gameplay that no Sony shooter has managed to create. I pick up the DualShock 4 and Destiny just feels smooth. When it comes to developing first-person shooters on consoles, Bungie is top-notch, but only now have PlayStation fans finally been able to experience that sense of polished FPS gameplay.
Although it’s quite likely that Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo 5 will draw some attention away from Destiny on Xbox, there is literally no competition in the FPS space on PlayStation consoles. Destiny will become the go-to shooter for PS4 and PS3 owners, and that’s why not only I can’t see it failing; Sony can’t either.
